


and no one will make a sound

by colberry



Category: the GazettE
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Personality Swap, Reita is a patient man, Stage Persona Takeover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 19:45:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colberry/pseuds/colberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Kouyou is there, somewhere underneath.</p><p>Or:  the one where stage personas are a tricky thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and no one will make a sound

 

 

Sometimes Kouyou is there.  And sometimes he flickers out and away – Uruha’s kohl-smeared eyes and crooked grin suddenly all there ever was, the lost smile and the grass-stained knees of years past nowhere to be found.

But Kouyou is there, somewhere underneath, somewhere in the kitchen making himself a strong one – something with vodka and lime and acid.  Akira can sometimes see his shadow flit across the walls, moving silently in socked feet, pouring everything they have into a tall glass – mouth murmuring notes, fingers tapping out melodies on the knotholes snaking along the countertop. 

And sometimes Kouyou is there in the eleventh hour, sitting alongside midnight on the edge of Akira’s bed, head tilted away so a curtain of dark-rooted hair covers his wet smile.  Akira sees him there, watches Kouyou trace constellations into his grandmother’s quilt, silent.  He sees him and he wants to reach up and touch.  Rest a fingertip on the curve of his jaw.  Slide a thumb across the freckle on his neck.  Keep him here. 

But Akira has hesitated his whole life:  unsure of the shadows that the stars hide behind, cautious against Uruha’s smirk and Kouyou’s knowing stare.  So he rolls over and tries to count Kouyou’s soft breaths beside him until the spaces in his eyes blur – missing how the moon begins to fade, how the mattress lifts.  

And sometimes Akira comes home from the conbini to find everything broken.  The silence is perfect and horrible as he picks up the shards of the shattered wine glass with shaking fingers.  He finds Uruha there, curled around an acoustic, music sheets strewn at his bare feet.  Akira grips the doorframe tight when Uruha looks up at him, eyes dusted with navy and old confessions, and smiles – his crimson-laced hands mouthing the chords of _Juunanasai_.   

And even when Akira can’t see Kouyou at all, he’ll talk to him – even as Uruha glances at him with a hooded gaze – because he knows the younger can hear him beneath the makeup and crumpled promises and neon lights.  Akira swallows, tells him he’s sorry –

sorry that he’s not sorry Michiko left him in a hastily scrawled note two years ago

_sorry that his hand lingered too long –_

sorry that he cares too much,  
that he’s too afraid to lose him,  
every goddamn part of him,  
to reach over at night –

sorry.

And when Kouyou looks back at him, he glows like a withering comet.  He’s almost translucent – pale like the breath of headstone flowers.  And maybe he would be like ripped silk beneath Akira’s callused hands if he just _reached and –_

_\-- and maybe swore to him that maybe, maybe –_

_“If I had the hands of god, I would fix everything – ”_

_and maybe lean in and –_  
  
“I would put it all back together.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ: March 3rd, 2012


End file.
